‘Twas the week-end before WWDC…
We did get updates to the apps formerly known as iWork and the second macOS 11.5 beta with some interesting notes in the AppleSeed for IT docs.
(Sponsor: SentinelOne)
Security Research
20 Common Tools & Techniques Used by macOS Threat Actors & Malware. We’ve included real in-the-wild examples and information about IoCs, hashes, and researcher analyses.
MacDeployment, hosted by the University of Calgary, was this week. Many thanks to the organizers, speakers, and audience. It was a fun event and a great one to kick-off the virtual conference season. They have already posted links to the three session blocks as videos on their sessions page.
Next we had the first Campfire session hosted by PSU MacAdmins. These will continue every Thursday in June and July.
Next week Monday, Apple starts off WWDC with the Keynote and State of the Union. Then they will release additional sessions over the rest of the week. You can watch with the Apple Developer app.
And then, last but not least, we will have MacDevOps YVR on June 9–11. You can still register for that.
You can also find all the info and links for the various conferences on my conference page, which is continually updated.
This will be a busy week!
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News and Opinion
- Apple in the Enterprise: A 2021 report card – Jason Snell, Six Colors
- Introducing NanoMDM – Jesse Peterson, MicroMDM
- Kinda a big announcement – Joel Spolsky, Stack Overflow
macOS and iOS Updates
- Pages 11.1: Mac, iOS, iCloud
- Keynote 11.1: Mac, iOS, iCloud
- Numbers 11.1: Mac, iOS, iCloud
- Security Update 2021-003 (Catalina)
- Security Update 2021-004 (Mojave)
MacAdmins on Twitter
- Rich Trouton: “Generating remote lock or wipe commands and need a random six digit number? Run this command:
((RND=RANDOM<<15|RANDOM)) ; echo ${RND: -6}“ - Nathaniel Strauss: “macOS 11.5 beta 2 (re)introduces a couple very sought after features. Go read the release notes. Feeling a lot better about deploying M1 Macs to students in the fall. Thanks MacAdmin community for coming together to file feedback.”
- David Smith: “Helpful Mac debugging tip You can enable super detailed UserDefaults logging with:
sudo log config --subsystem=com.apple.defaults --mode "level:debug, persist:debug"(And disable again withsudo log config --subsystem=com.apple.defaults --reset)”
Security and Privacy
Support and HowTos
- os_log haystack needler – The Bits
- Config Profile and manage ALL the things…just about – Bob Gendler
- M1 Macs have a third Recovery mode – Howard Oakley
- macOS 11.4 Breaks Full Disk Access for Helper Tools – Michael Tsai
- VPN access to Azure from macOS with Azure Active Directory authentication – Sonia Cuff, Microsoft Tech Community
- How to make macOS betas and upgrades safer – Howard Oakley
Scripting and Automation
- Using the Jamf Pro API to send device lock commands via MDM to multiple Macs – Rich Trouton
- Updated Jamf Pro MDM lock script to add reporting feature – Rich Trouton
Updates and Releases
To Watch
- MacDeployemnt 2021 Sessions (the videos for each of the three session blocks are posted on this page)
- MacDeployment 2021: Administering Apple Silicon – Ben Toms
- Updating macOS – A Nudge in the right direction – Neil Martin
To Listen
- Interview With Jason Dettbarn / Founder & CEO of Addigy — Command-Control-Power
- Apple Enterprise Report Card, with Jason Snell of Six Colors – Mac Admins Podcast
- Security vs the Cloud with Aspen and Ben – MacDevOpsYVR
Just for Fun
- Four Laps on Vimeo – Marcin Wichary (Next level presentation skills)
Support
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